


The Nature of Success

by Star_Going_Supernova



Category: Bendy and the Ink Machine
Genre: Dad!Henry (Bendy and the Ink Machine), Gen, Henry’s the one who sent him a letter, Joey’s the one who shows up at the studio, but just so you know, even when he's technically the villain he's still, it's quite different I think, reverse au, this isn't exactly like the game just with them swapped, villain!Henry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-21
Updated: 2018-01-21
Packaged: 2019-03-07 17:49:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13440039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Star_Going_Supernova/pseuds/Star_Going_Supernova
Summary: Joey pushed open the old wooden door, stepping into the dilapidated studio.Letting it close behind him, he said, mostly to himself, “All right, Henry. I’m here. Let’s see if we can find what you wanted me to see.”





	The Nature of Success

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [With Infinite Worlds, Everything Must Exist Somewhere](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12785889) by [Star_Going_Supernova](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Star_Going_Supernova/pseuds/Star_Going_Supernova). 



> Prompt on tumblr from Imagination_Tier/guess-my-country: _Hiya Star, are you still taking requests? If yes, would you be willing to expand on the universe where Henry got into the crazy juice and it’s Joey dealing with a studio of horrors?_
> 
> The challenge I gladly took up here was how to make Henry the villain without completely retconning his personality. I wanted it to still recognizably be him, after all.
> 
> This is continued from one of the other universes in Infinite Worlds, but it's not necessary to read that one first. The first two lines of this story are taken directly from that.

**In another world,** Joey pushed open the old wooden door, stepping into the dilapidated studio.

Letting it close behind him, he said, mostly to himself, “All right, Henry. I’m here. Let’s see if we can find what you wanted me to see.”

He wandered aimlessly, searching for anything that would give him a clue as to why he’d been summoned here after so long. It’d been years since he’d last seen Henry, after he’d been forced to fire him. Joey hadn’t wanted to, but something in his old friend had changed after the war. 

In the months following Henry’s return from service, employee after employee had come to Joey, nervously telling him how the things Henry said scared them. Talk of bringing their cartoon characters to life, through sacrifices or magick or demons. 

Though Joey had tried to talk some sense into him, the final straw had been when Joey found countless sketches of human-to-toon conversions and designs for nonsense machines in Henry’s office. 

The following argument hadn’t been pleasant, and the only thing that kept Joey from feeling completely rotten about it was how relieved his employees had been once Henry had left for good. 

So what was all this about, not only decades after Henry’s termination but several years after the studio had closed down under the owners that had taken over after Joey’s retirement? 

Joey turned a corner and felt his heart do something funny in his chest at the sight of a machine that he only barely recognized from those sketches ages ago.

Oh, Henry. You didn’t. 

• • • • •

Joey didn’t know what to think. Obviously, Henry had had some level of success, being that there technically were living toons roaming the expanded version of the studio he still loved. But they were so off-model. It didn’t seem like Henry at all, not when Joey remembered the man’s sense of perfection regarding the characters’ designs. 

But the presence of Sammy— if he could still call that creature _Sammy_ — had really thrown him, as had Susie and Allison’s voices combined in the Alice Angel sequestered on Level 9. And then there was the implication that the Projectionist creature in the maze, the one he’d been forced to run from not five minutes ago, was Norman. 

Part of him expected Boris to start talking like Wally every time he boarded the elevator. 

None of that, though, measured up to the monstrous Bendy that seemed determined to catch him. There were signs, little ones but there nonetheless, that this Bendy and Henry were one and the same.

It made his stomach churn when he considered just what Henry wanted him back for, when the evidence seemed to point towards humans becoming the toons, just as Henry’s sketches had once indicated. 

Joey dumped the ink hearts in Alice’s— Susie and Allison’s?— dropbox and waited to see if she had any further instructions. She’d said that this would be his last task, but he didn’t exactly trust Alice. There was only silence, though. 

With a shrug, Joey headed back to the lift where Boris was still waiting for him. “I’m not sure what to do now,” he admitted as he pressed the button to send it up as far as it went. “I guess we just… leave.” 

Boris nodded enthusiastically. 

The trip through Level K and Heavenly Toys was nerve-wracking, but there was no sign of Alice or Bendy, or even any of the wandering Butcher gang. Not even a single Searcher popped up. 

Strange, but perhaps Joey’s luck had finally turned, or maybe he’d won whatever sick game it’d felt like he was being forced to play. He’d have to leave without his answers about Henry, but that, he figured, was okay as long as he got to leave at all. 

He wasn’t sure if Sammy had survived his encounter with Bendy in the music department, but his former music director didn’t try and jump him as Joey and Boris traveled to the stairwell that would take them up to the main floor. 

The ink that had flooded the halls up there was gone. All was still and silent, just as it had been when he’d first arrived. 

Joey stepped carefully, wary of a trap, but nothing looked out of place. 

Finally, he entered the room directly off the main entrance. _Looks like we’re home free_ , he thought with a smile. 

Of course, just as he turned to head down the hallway to the outside world, a projector clicked on behind him, and suddenly the wall was covered by a shadow of Bendy’s asymmetrical horns. 

Joey whirled. Haloed by the light, Bendy tilted his head at him, though he didn’t make any other movement. Regardless, Joey prepared to spin around and run the short distance to the exit, but before he could so much as shift on his feet, hands from behind him clamped down on his upper arms. 

He twisted to see the Projectionist— Norman, whichever— standing in the shadows, rendered invisible to Joey’s careless eye with the projector off. 

“What is this?” he asked, testing his captor’s grip. Unfortunately, it was quite solid.

Bendy straightened, and for a moment, Joey fully expected to hear Henry’s voice come out of his sickly grinning mouth. Instead, Bendy merely stepped aside, revealing the former animator himself. 

“What,” Joey said. “ _What._ ” 

He squinted into the light, wishing whoever turned it on— he thought it was Sammy back there— would turn it off. He could barely see Henry with him being backlit so brightly, leaving him more as a silhouette than anything. 

“Is that any way to greet your old friend after so long?” Henry asked. “How have you been since we last spoke all those years ago?”

Joey ignored his words. “Have you been here all along?” he asked instead, frustrated and angry and a tiny bit scared.

“Well, of course,” Henry said, “what would be the point of bringing you back if I wasn’t around to see your reactions?” 

“My— what?” 

“Your reactions. You and and all the others thought I was insane, that my dreams of bringing my characters to life were crazy. I wanted to see the look on your face when you realized I proved you wrong. It can’t possibly surprise you to know that I’ve been watching you, from the moment you entered the studio, to both times you fled from Bendy, to your adventures with Alice in the lower levels.” 

The lower levels— where he’d been with Boris. Abruptly remembering that he hadn’t come up here alone, Joey looked to the side, where Boris stood half hidden by the corner’s shadow. The moment the toon noticed that he’d caught Joey’s attention, Boris stepped forward into the light. 

There was a split second where Joey felt hope in his heart, where he dared to believe that Boris would be able to save him somehow. But then Boris kept moving until he was facing Joey from over Henry’s shoulder, beside the deformed Alice. 

“Oh, I recognize that face you’re making,” Henry said. There was a flash of white— he was either smiling or smirking. “You think Boris betrayed you to me, that he left your side for his own purposes. Joey, old friend. He was never on your side to begin with.”

“You set this all up. Gave me hope that I could escape, when, what? The game was rigged from the beginning?” Joey strained against Norman’s unbreakable hold, wishing he could smack Henry around for what he’d done. 

Tilting his head, Henry asked, “How else could I have shown you how wrong you were while giving you the full experience of my success?”

“Success?” Joey repeated disbelievingly. “Look at them, Henry! You call those monsters a _success?_ ” 

Henry held eye contact with him for a long moment before turning to the side. “Bendy,” he said. “If you don’t mind?” 

In a great rush of ink, Bendy went from being a towering eight feet and horrifically off-model to not-quite-as-tall as Henry’s waist and perfectly on-model, down to his pie-cut eyes and gentler, more mischievous grin. He didn’t spare Joey a glance as he stepped towards Henry, raising his hands to be picked up.

It felt wrong to Joey, knowing what sort of person Henry was now, to watch him scoop Bendy off the floor and prop the little toon on his hip like a caring father, in an obviously familiar maneuver. 

Behind them, Alice smiled sweetly at Joey as the corruptions melted off her face and body, erasing the humanness from her form. Her halo reaching the bottom of Henry’s ribs, she stepped up beside him and clutched at the hem of his shirt. 

Joey glared at the picture they made, like a sweet, happy family. “And at what cost, huh? I remember, y’know, about how you used to talk. Demons and things like that. And those pictures.” He jerked his chin at Sammy over Henry’s shoulder. “Humans to toons, right? You sell their souls, too?”

This time, Henry’s smile was very obvious in his shadowed silhouette. “No demons involved. Any supernatural assistance I needed was easily found in an old book belonging to my grandfather. Turns out I’m not the first one in my family to dream big.” 

“But they are, aren’t they. Sammy and Norman, Susie and Allison, probably Wally. I bet even the Butcher gang were humans, too, Thomas and Grant and Shawn or something.”

“Whether or not they’re who you think they are isn’t important. And besides, you could just be working yourself up over nothing. Would you even believe me if I said the Projectionist and the Prophet were merely made in their image? That all of this was simply us putting on a show for you?” 

Joey’s gaze flickered over the assemblage of toons. “No. I don’t think I would.” 

“That’s your choice,” Henry said. He raised his free hand in a halfhearted shrug. “What you decide to believe won’t change anything.” 

Norman’s hands tightened around Joey’s arms, and goosebumps covered his arms. That sounded incredibly ominous. 

“What are you talking about?” 

Henry stepped forward, his toons following after him. “Did you think I’d just let you go? That now you know the truth, you can be allowed to leave? You’d go straight to the nearest authorities, you’d brand me a delusional psychopath who murdered his former fellow employees. If it was only me I had to worry about, I wouldn’t care. You could try to do whatever you want to me.”

Bendy hissed, his arms tightening possessively around Henry’s neck. From beneath the man’s chin, he glared at Joey. Alice and Boris reacted much the same, sneering and growling respectively as they pressed closer against Henry.

Even if he got free from Norman, Joey realized, he’d never stand a chance. Not with the rest of the toons there. He wondered if Henry had some power over them, or if they just didn’t know any better. 

“But it’s not just me,” Henry continued. “I have my toons as well. And I won’t let you hurt them.”  
  
“So, what?” Joey asked, hoping his voice didn’t sound as shaky as it felt. “Are you going to kill me? Or will you have one of them do it, and make them into murderers too?”

Henry didn’t answer, but he did gently release Bendy, who immediately returned to his eight-foot-tall form. Giving Joey a vicious grin, he raised his fist, preparing to slam it against the back of his head. In the split second before he did, Joey saw Henry step forward, finally leaving the blinding light behind him.

It took Joey a moment to realize that something was wrong. Bendy swung.

The last thing Joey thought before unconsciousness claimed him was that Henry didn’t look a day over twenty-five.

**Author's Note:**

> Should I end it there, and leave what happens to Joey a mystery? >:)
> 
> Anyway, let me know what you thought of villain!Henry, and if I managed to keep his Henry-ness intact despite his new villain status.


End file.
